SIBERIAN STATISTICS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2295, 26 March 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

SIBERIAN STATISTICS.

Some statistics recently published by the Russian Government have raised doubts, even in official circles, as to the expediency of maintaining Siberia as a penal colony. It appears from these statistics that the number of convicts and exiles sent to Siberia from .Russian itself between the years 1751 and 18S4 was little short of a million, the cxilus alone number 750,000. From 18'28 tn 1832 the number of persons exiled was 98,725 ; from 1853 to 1862, 101,238, and from 1863 to 1873, 146,380. The condition of the exiles is very bad, and, as their sole aim is to get back to Russia, the number of those who get away is very large, amounting during the last twenty years to 24 per cent, of the total number of exiles. In 1877 it was officially stated that in the Government of Tomsk, out of "28,828 exiles, 9,726, or more than a third, had fled. So in the Government of Tobolsk, out of the 51,122 exiled who had been sent there, only 34,293 were actually resident there in 1875. Most of the exiles are in the prime of life, and this renders it. all the more difficult to them to accommodate themselves to a fresh mode of life. Women form but a fifth of the whole number of exiles, and as most of them are over forty there is very little chance of their marrying ; while, for the matter of that, marriage is forbidden during the first five years of exile. According to the official statistics, two-thirds of the crimes in Siberia are communicated by exiles.